The Covid-19 Pandemic has taken a hit on all of us whether it’s a big business or small, it hasn’t left anyone out. While some have been laid off by their firms, others are struggling to stay. In these times, when the economy has hit its ground, sitting at home can be very difficult.
This pandemic has created an impact on people’s lives which can’t be easily forgotten. While many small businesses have completely shut down, others are trying hard to stand on their feet with limited operations and remote work which has resulted in the rising unemployment. With this situation, people have learned that relying on one single source of income isn’t enough, and hence, they’ve started looking for various ways to earn passive income online.
A lot of businesses have/and are turning towards the online mode of business and started selling their products and services through online platforms. Now you may think, what if I don’t have any product or service to offer? Well, in that case, there are still plenty of opportunities out there.
You can help other businesses sell their products online by promoting them, earning a great commission in return. This is known as Affiliate Marketing. Let me explain to you in detail.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate Marketing is when you promote other company’s / brand’s products online and earn a commission. It’s just like the traditional profession of a salesperson the only difference is you can do this process for several brands.
Isn’t that amazing?
What’s even better is that “you’ll get the commission on the entire purchase and not just the product you recommend when someone makes a purchase through your affiliate link”
How does Affiliate Marketing work?
As an Affiliate Marketer, your job is to promote the brand’s products. In order to do that, first, you will have to find your niche. Choose a product in your niche and start reviewing it. Now, you must be thinking about the product you are going to choose to promote via affiliate marketing. So let me help you here a little.
ANY PRODUCT WORKS
There may be some products that you often like to use a lot, you should start with them. Start reviewing those products.
Now, you need to find and join the Affiliate Marketing programs to start promoting the products. There are tons of them. Choose according to your niche and level of expertise.
Now, what happens after you’ve joined a program?
Every affiliate merchant provides a unique link to each affiliate so that they can track the sales from each affiliate and when someone buys through your affiliate link you earn a commission.
So, when a customer clicks on that link, a file gets stored on their device called cookies. Generally, these cookies have an expiration time, but you’ll get paid even when the customer delays the purchase.
What to look for in good Affiliate Marketing programs?
1. Easy to Use
For a beginner, who’s just entering into the world of Affiliate Marketing, this factor really is important. You should be able to sign up and create backlinks easily into an affiliate program otherwise there’s no point in doing all this effort if you are not able to access the program interface properly.
2. Commission and Payments
The whole point of doing all these efforts is to get something in return. If you’re just starting with Affiliate Marketing you should consider joining the programs with low pay, but high- volume, like Amazon. The best thing about Amazon is you’ll get a ton of products to promote and you can earn up to 10% commissions on almost anything Amazon sells.
3. Within your Niche
The product you choose to sell, should be within or related to your niche topic. This is so important because your review should look original and people should be able to connect with you. With a product like that, you can think out of the box while creating content and not limiting yourself just to sell the product.
With that being said, Let me share my story with you on how I earned $5000 a month during the lockdown and which program did I join.
So, I chose Daily Consumables and Kitchen Essential products to promote and earn a commission. There were two reasons for this.
People are relying on E-Commerce as the safest option for their Daily consumables like groceries, food staples, etc.
During the past few months, social media was literally flooded with food pictures and recipes that people were trying out at their homes which resulted in a 50% increase in the sales of Kitchen essentials like cooking appliances, utensils, and Baking equipment.
So, I decided to create a food blog and social media pages. After creating the blog, I put in a recipe for a cake that required some essential equipment, and for those, I added some images with the amazon affiliate link.
For attracting visitors, I run some ads to attract people and after they read my article they buy the product for which I got a commission.
And the icing on the cake is, Amazon gives the commission on cart value which means if a person goes from my Amazon affiliate site to buy the kitchen essentials and buys other products also, I will be getting a commission on that too.
Yes, It’s that easy and it’s a WIN-WIN for both me and the seller.
Also read: Google Word Coach – Everything You Need to Know
Best Affiliate Programs for Beginners
Let’s take a look at some of my favorite Affiliate programs that give you a sure-shot chance at earning at an initial stage.
Amazon Associates
The amazon affiliate program was the very first affiliate program that launched in 1996. It’s for products with low payout but mass appeal. It is one of the largest affiliate programs in the world. For someone who’s just starting with Affiliate marketing, what really attracts them towards the amazon affiliate program is the number of products they offer to sell and the easy UI. Amazon pays the affiliates in NET 60 which means within 60 days. A lot of business owners are attracted to sell their products on amazon which means more products to choose from and a lot more commission earnings.
In order to become an Amazon Associate, you must have a website or a blog, app or YouTube channel wherein you’ll promote the products, extra brownie points if your content is pre-populated because it will appear active and authentic to the users and Amazon. Follow these 5 simple steps to sign up as an Amazon Associate and you’re good to go.
Click here to sign up as an Amazon affiliate.
E-bay Partner Network
The e-bay partner network (EPN) is an affiliate program by e-bay. E-bay offers its own affiliate program so there’s no mediator involved in the process. It offers the affiliates a fair chance to bond with the e-bay affiliate team which obviously is going to help them in the long run. There are over 1.4 billion listings on e-bay out of which 80% includes new products, so you get limitless choices to pick from. The commission rate on e-bay is also high which is about 40 – 80%. There’s customer support dedicated to the affiliates which makes the process a lot easier for the affiliates to join the program. The payment process is also flexible, e-bay pays in NET 60, and the rate card gives the affiliates liberty to predict their earning.
The only downside of EPN is that the cookie expires after 24 hrs., whereas the auction goes on which doesn’t benefit the affiliate.
CJ Affiliates
Conversant rebranded Commission Junction as CJ affiliates. CJ was founded in 1998 since then they are working as a middleman between the Advertisers and publishers. It is a platform where Affiliate Marketing newbies can partner with the world’s largest brands and earn commission by promoting their goods/ services.
Both cookie duration and average commission rate depend on the merchant you sign up with. A person with little or no experience in affiliate Marketing may find it complicated but a passionate newcomer can overcome the hurdle. The signing up process is simple and mostly the same as Amazon and E-bay, you need to fill in your details and you must have a website, blog, YouTube channel, or so on to join the program.
Click here to become a CJ Publisher
Cuelinks
Cuelink is a content monetization network. It’s not like the other affiliate programs that I have mentioned above but it can work wonders for your content.
Cuelink saves your time of signing up on individual affiliate sites.
So basically, what cue link does is that when you write a review or content related to a product or service and you mention its shop link in your content cue link automatically turns it into an affiliate link. So when a customer buys that link you get a fair share of your hard work.
Isn’t that amazing?
All you have to do is Just add the Cuelinks plugin and all the links get monetized instantly. No matter how old your content is! It has about 1000+ merchants and affiliate programs all under one roof and you’re instantly approved for all of them once your cue link account is approved.
Click here to install the Cuelink tool
CONCLUSION
No affiliate program can help you earn overnight. Affiliate Marketing takes time. All you need to have is patience and passion and you’ll succeed one day. Now that you know about the programs, it’s time to decide which one suits your content the best. Always keep in mind, choose the products closest to your niche and you will be able to produce great content and earn good eventually.
I hope you could get something useful out of my experience with Affiliate Marketing.